


(You've Always Been) The Main Attraction

by LaShaRa



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint Barton Sings, Grief, Hawkeye Got Moves, Jeremy Renner - Freeform, Multi, Music, Natasha deserved better, Not Canon Compliant, Phil Coulson Needs a Hug, Post-Endgame, Post-snap, Reunions, Roadtrips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-06-26 23:03:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19778278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaShaRa/pseuds/LaShaRa
Summary: He shouldn’t have stopped at the bar tonight, but he’s so tired. Today’s potential recruit hit him twice in the ribs with a skateboard before Phil gave up on diplomacy and tasered him, and the one a few towns back was particularly creative when it came to using exposed wiring as a strangulation device. Once upon a time Phil would have enjoyed the sharp, heavy nostalgia of those tussles. Tonight it just exhausts him.





	1. I Feel Alive With Nowhere To Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scifigrl47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifigrl47/gifts).



> Title is a nod to Jeremy Renner's grand new track "Main Attraction", which also inspired most of this fic. I've never written anything in this fandom before but this one just wouldn't let go of me. I don't watch Agents of SHIELD and a lot of my Avengers-knowledge comes from hanging around on the archive rather than watching the actual movies, so I've chosen to ignore/tweak canon when it suits me. Dedicating this to scifigrl47 because there was a time when I basically lived in their fics and ignored the real world and that was quite pleasant.

When it came to all the ways Phil thought he would see Clint again, this didn’t make the list.

He’s somewhere in Arizona and he’s been on the road for days. _You’re going hunting, Cheese_ , said Marcus, and it wasn’t a question. Phil knows the assignment makes sense - SHIELD needs new blood and with the Bus grounded for the next six months, he needs something to do with himself. And Marcus knows this, because Marcus has gotten possibly even more omniscient, post-Dusting. He’d waved a dismissive hand and Phil had bitten his tongue and headed for the garage to get the motorcycle he's been assigned for jobs like this. It felt wrong to not stop by his office first, to not leave a note stuck to the back of the hidden weapons locker. Unlike his new assignment, this sense of wrongness makes no sense whatsoever, because Phil hasn’t needed an office at SHIELD HQ in years, hasn’t had anyone who’d visit him there. Then again, having things make sense is a hit or miss affair these days, for Phillip Coulson.

He shouldn’t have stopped at the bar tonight, but he’s so tired. Today’s potential recruit hit him twice in the ribs with a skateboard before Phil gave up on diplomacy and tasered him, and the one a few towns back was particularly creative when it came to using exposed wiring as a strangulation device. Once upon a time Phil would have enjoyed the sharp, heavy nostalgia of those tussles. Tonight it just exhausts him. He parks the bike in the shadows of an alley and walks back to the large, flashy block of buildings, vaguely surprised to pass a cleverly parked limo and a few sedans with tinted windows. He wonders who would bother with a limo around here and shifts his jacket so that the Beretta makes itself felt. His bruised side aches where the metal digs into it and it’s an old comfort, one he clings to as he walks into the bar, negotiates the neon-lit stairs and looks for an open seat.

He doesn’t look around the space beyond the first instinctive sweep, though he notes in a cursory way that it’s surprisingly sleek, with a well-appointed stage off to the side, dominated by a drum set in royal purple. There’s a drink in a hand after a few minutes with the promise of more and that’s all he really cares about right now.

 _For shame, Coulson,_ smolders a voice in his mind. _I thought I could trust you to treat good liquor well._

He swallows deep, doesn’t wince. Natasha is a hole in his sternum that never really closes over no matter how many raw, furious recruits try to strangle him with their curtains and wires and thighs. Sometimes he can’t get her voice out of his head and then the hole she left bleeds over into all the others, into Steve and Tony and - and if he doesn’t stop now he won’t ever stop bleeding. _Not tonight,_ he thinks, _not again_.

 _I’ll stop if you stop murdering that vodka_.

“Another,” Phil tells the barman and puts his head down on the polished wood. Natasha is silent, disapproving. Another and another and then he can find a hotel and pass out for a few blessed hours, Phil thinks, prays. Dimly he notices that the crowd is growing around him, the noise level climbing steadily from comfortable to buzzed, a push of people past the bar and towards the stage. Hopefully that means no one will be paying attention to him. Soon enough, there’s a vocalist on stage, a pretty young brunette. She sings something acoustic, her hands cradling the mic and the crowd is kind to her. Then a rap duo, also young, but popular with the locals, if the crowd’s reaction is anything to go by. Phil drinks and listens because he’s there and it means not listening for the voices in his head to come back. Then the rap ends and the crowd roars and he decides that the main act is finally here. He remembers the limo and the cars in the alley and makes up his mind to leave when the glass he’s holding is empty.

He couldn’t order another drink if he wanted to anyway, because the bartender’s not paying attention. He’s watching the stage, like everyone else in the crowd that’s slowly losing its collective shit. Phil stares into his glass. He can hear those purple drums, heavy guitar, a new vocalist. Something about the singer’s voice burrows past the buzz he put up to keep everyone else out. The voice is smoky in a controlled way, husky and rock-and-roll high by turns, hitting every note solid and true. Once he’s started listening, Phil finds himself following the rhythms of the song, waiting on the next chorus, no matter how much he tries not to. There’s something familiar about that voice, the settled, steady core of it and he has to shake his head. Finish your drink, he tells himself. Enough nostalgia for one night. If he’s not halfway to New Mexico by noon tomorrow noon Marcus will have his head.

He drops a couple of twenties on the bar and gets to his feet. He means to walk straight to the door, but the crowd is pulsing and vibrating as the singer pushes towards his last chorus and Phil comes to a halt halfway up the stairs that lead to the doors. He puts his back against the rail, annoyed, just as an over-excited teenager decides to slip off the step in front of him. Phil grabs for him before he can cause a pileup; he gets a fistful of jacket before the kid’s momentum drags him back around towards the stage. There’s a few seconds where they’re slipping but then the kid rights himself, shouting a thank you.

But Phil doesn’t hear him. Phil doesn’t hear anything. There’s a silent roaring in his head, nothing getting in or out, and the only other time he’s felt like this was right after the Snap, standing in the gym on the Bus with the pile of dust that had been Skye, and there was nothing in his ears but the roaring, for days, until the day the comms buzzed and it was Natasha, sobbing and sobbing across space and time.

But this is different. This is different. Skye is back and Natasha is gone and this time is still different, this time might change everything, because the man on the stage is Clint.


	2. You're The Perfect Distraction

He’s heard Clint sing before. It was a lifetime ago, forever ago, but there’s nothing that Clinton Francis Barton has done or said or cussed out or shot or laughed at or cried over or hated or loved and yes, sung, that Phillip J. Coulson has not memorized and filed away and treasured, deep in his mind, in his heart, in the place where he keeps the things he does not want tarnished by the dirt of missions and agendas and Nick Fury’s orders.

He’d been at HQ, trying to put a dent in the mostly Barton-generated pile of paperwork which at that point had seemed self-replenishing. Given that it was SHIELD, it might have been. It was a little after five in the morning, that perfect, relatively still hour where the world was a dark window, the warm aroma of coffee and the halo of yellow light around his desk. The steady swoop of pen to paper and the distant hum and rumble of a city that never slept. Perfect. 

The voice had blended into the background until the moment when it hadn’t and then he was suddenly aware that someone was singing their way through the vents above the office next to his.  _ Clint  _ was singing his way through the vents, because who else could it logically be, at five-thirty in the morning? 

He should have blocked the sound out and just gone on with the mission report, but - it was Clint. And Clint sang the way he moved in the field - rough, unexpected, but hitting every note he was supposed to at the very moment when it seemed like there was no way he could possibly recover. 

_ “I’m a man on a mission, there ain’t no stopping no quitting…” _

It wasn’t a song Phil was familiar with, and that surprised him, because after so many long drives together he’d thought himself well-versed in Clint’s musical tastes, but there was no denying that the lyrics held true. Smiling to himself, he’d listened as Clint swung into the next verse, the words trailing off in some places into a low  _ da-dum-dum-dum  _ as he flubbed the lyrics or maybe just negotiated a tight corner. For a moment the strain of  _ “I’m just going with flowing no matter where I am going”  _ grew impossible to ignore as Clint moved into the space over his office, and Phil arranged his face into a trademarked “Nothing surprises me, Barton,” expression, but Clint didn’t pause, just crawled over into the office beyond. Phil listened as the song trailed off by degrees, heading roughly in the direction of the cafeteria, and then he went back to his paperwork. He wasn’t sure why he was disappointed that Clint hadn’t stopped to drop in like he always did, why he was wondering if Clint didn’t want to share this singing-in-the-vents part of himself with Phil, why that hurt. Eventually, though, he went back to the forms, ignoring how the stillness in his office suddenly seemed to have crossed the line into quiet - too quiet. 

He never asked Clint what he’d been singing. He never heard Clint sing again.

And yet, here and now, a lifetime on, he can’t believe he didn’t hear it sooner. Clint’s honed the roughness in his voice until it’s the perfect husky rasp; there’s a hint of country drawl, an edge of rock n’ roll roar, but the core of it, the soul of it, is the way Clint sounded right after the Avengers won a battle, hoarse and delighted, trying to outdo Tony in exchanging jibes with the downed villain, yelping in protest as Natasha grabbed him by the hair and dragged him away. There’s something so settled in it, so confident that this is exactly where he needs to be, something Phil hasn’t felt in forever. He wraps his arms around himself so hard that his ribs scream in protest. His eyes actually water, blurring his vision enough that it takes him a moment to realize that Clint is looking straight at him. 

The lights are bright in Clint’s face and the rest of the club is dark with occasional fluorescent pulses and there are a hundred people in here and Clint is still singing, engaging the crowd, not missing a beat, but his eyes are fixed on Phil and even at this distance Phil can see them getting wider, see the smile go rigid on his face, see his hands spasm once on the mic, because after all this time, in spite of the new name plastering the club, emblazoned on the  _ bright purple drum set _ , he is still Clinton Francis Barton, he is  _ Hawkeye. _

_ Fuck _ . 

Phil bolts. It’s not easy with this crowd, but he wouldn’t be Phillip. J. Coulson if he needed easy. He’s outside in fifteen seconds, sprinting down the alley in thirty. He reaches the bike and swings himself on, already calculating the fastest route out of town. That’s as fast as he gets before a figure drops off the back wall of the club and lands in the dirt in front of him without so much as a puff of dust. 

“You leaving already, sir?”

Phil closes his eyes and wonders what the odds are of him getting out of this situation before Marcus finds out. The odds are not in his favour. Without opening his eyes, he says, “Is that really such a surprise, Barton?”

“Well, sir. You drove all the way out here. Least you could’ve done is said hello.”

The voice is so familiar,  _ so familiar.  _ If he gripped the bike any harder he’s going to do himself an injury, thinks Phil. Then there’s a warm hand on his, easing it gently away from the metal, and there are calluses on those fingers which Phil knows by heart and a few that he’s never felt before.  _ Guitar,  _ he thinks, and then the hand falls away. “Phil?”

There’s a smallness in that voice now, a fear that Phil knows precious few in the world were allowed to hear, once upon a time, and he sighs, resigns himself to his fate and the fact that hundreds of miles away, Marcus just woke up laughing like a maniac, and opens his eyes. 

“There you are,” says Clint Barton, relief vibrating through his voice. “It’s good to see you, Phil.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it continues! I'm having fun with this fic. Maybe too much fun. As always, much credit to Jeremy Renner for the songs and the scenes and the titles. And to Marvel for the characters and the worlds and the inspiration and such. And to the other amazing writers in this verse who continue to demonstrate why this pairing is awesome. Thank you to everyone who's reading along/leaving kudos/comments, I'm glad you're as enthused about it as I am!


	3. We Got Nothing But Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this got away from me a little. Again. And turned out way more emotional than I'd planned. Ah, well. Here's hoping that's your kind of thing.

“ _Purple drums_ , Hawkeye? ”

It’s a stupid thing to say. A juvenile, throwaway comment, the kind that was easy sunshine currency between the two of them in that other lifetime, the kind that has no place or value in this dark alleyway. Clint shrugs. “You know me, boss. I like my calling cards.” He glances towards the club, then back at Phil. “Haven’t been Hawkeye for a while, though. But I’m guessin’ you knew that.”

Phil did not know that. Phil does not know what the hell is happening here. He decides to take the coward’s way out and flip the conversation back to Clint. “Shouldn’t your alter ego be taking the stage again? As inebriated as those teenagers are, I’m sure a few of them have noticed that Jeremy Renner isn’t actually in the building.”

Clint smiles. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You know the most interesting thing about Jeremy Renner? Guy’s unpredictable as all hell. Leaving the building halfway through a set isn’t even in the top ten weirdest things I’ve done in this gig. The fans love it.” His smile gets a little more genuine. “Got a great crew back there, too. They just carry on with or without me, no questions asked. Which leaves me free to ask questions of my own, like _where the hell have you been, boss_?”

“I haven’t been your commanding officer for a long time, Clint,” Phil deflects. The coward’s move again, parroting Clint’s line back at him, but it’s all he can do to sit upright on the bike, to stay in this alleyway having this conversation with this man. “And as to where I’ve been, that’s a long story, and you have fans waiting for you.”

The words are barely out of Phil’s mouth before Clint’s eyes go hard and dark and then his former agent (former everything) is leaning over the front of the bike, right into Phil’s space. “They’ll understand,” breathes Clint, and his voice is very low and very dangerous. “Because, boss, if you think you can just show up at my gig in the middle of bumfuck, Arizona and then sneak right back out without a single explanation of where you’ve been for the last _five fucking years_ , you are out of your damn mind.” Clint breathes out, slow and controlled, and it’s like the last breath before he took a killshot, and Phil has no idea how Clint went from asking for a hello to incandescent with rage. He wonders if he can make a run for it, how far he’d get, whether Clint’s in shape enough to catch up before it costs him too much to be worth it. “Barton-”

“ _It’s Clint_ ,” comes the snarling reply, cutting him off. “It’s been Clint for years, fucking years, Phil, until everything went to shit and you decided to leave.” For a second it sounds like Clint’s voice wavers, but then he leans forward again and Phil decides he’s imagined it, mistaken rage for grief. The two are not dissimilar. But Clint is still talking. “But you’re here now. And you owe me, Phil. You owe me. There’s a Jeep two blocks over and we’re gonna get in it and we’re gonna drive and we're going to talk about a couple things.”

Phil should say no. Phil should deck Clint if he has to, because there’s a chance he still can, and then he should ride the hell away, dialing SHIELD as he does. He should call this in, even if five years ago Hawkeye walked out of Tony Stark’s funeral and disappeared and Nick Fury said, “He’s compromised,” and Marcus said, “Let him go, Cheese”; he should call it in regardless, because the world may have ended and been miraculously put back together but there’s a protocol, dammit.

Phil doesn’t do any of that. Phil watches Clint stash the bike, catches the saddlebags Clint tosses at him, and follows Clint away from the club. The parts of his brain that aren’t going into overdrive or still somewhat inebriated note that Clint looks increasingly different from the last time Phil saw him. He’s wearing an ankle-length black duster that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a twenty-something Nick Fury’s wardrobe; the silhouette that adds to Fury’s looming height only accentuates the changes in Clint’s frame. Gone is Ronin’s bulk and blade-sharp mohawk, gone is Hawkeye’s banked, leashed power; this Clint reminds Phil of no one so much as that furious, lethal teenager he recruited outside the circus all those lifetimes ago. This Clint isn’t frail, isn’t starving, isn’t terrified, but Phil can’t shake the image. What else has changed in five years?

The Jeep is a sleek blue thing tucked at the back of an underground parking garage. Clint climbs fluidly in like he doesn’t see Phil grimace, but as the engine starts up he stares straight over the wheel and says, “He doesn’t have a lot of enemies.”

The inebriated part of Phil’s brain decides to take one for the team. “Who?”

“Jeremy Renner.” Clint pulls out of the garage. He waits until they’re two intersections away before saying, “He’s charming, doesn’t take anything too seriously, keeps a low profile. People generally want someone more interesting to direct their hate at.”

Most of the replies that come to Phil don’t seem like they’d improve this situation, so he keeps quiet. Clint’s focused on getting out of town; he still hasn’t really looked at Phil by the time they’re on the highway heading south. The desert falls away on either side of them. Phil feels a little nauseous. There’s a smoldering voice wending through his mind and he tries his best to pretend it isn’t there. One ghost at a time.

“How did you know I’d be playing here?”

Phil startles like a junior agent - badly. Clint stares through the windshield at the road disappearing under their wheels. They’re doing this here, then. Phil licks his lips and wishes he’d had a chance to sober up first. “I didn’t,” he admits. “I was - recruiting, a few towns back. Stopped for a drink. I didn’t know that you’d be - that you were - I didn’t know.”

In the light from the dashboard, Clint’s jaw sets. Phil finds himself distracted for a full six seconds before Clint says. “I looked for you.”

The nausea returns. “What?”

“After the funerals. After Laura - left. After I was sure the kids were okay. I looked for you. Got close enough that Fury showed up on my doorstep one day. Told me you’d gone back to May and the others, but that you knew - what happened. And I thought - I thought maybe it made sense that you’d want to go on as if the world had gone back to the way it was but - I didn’t think you’d just - I didn’t-”

Clint’s voice is getting higher, his words coming faster, and before Phil quite gets his head around where this conversation is going Clint is pulling off the highway, taking an exit Phil didn’t even see coming up. They blow past signs for a Holiday Inn and a McDonald's and then they’re rolling into a mostly empty parking lot. Clint steps on the brakes more recklessly than Phil’s seen him be in over a decade and then he’s out of the Jeep, striding towards the edge of a lot. For a minute Phil just sits stunned in the passenger seat; he feels like he’s just been in a car crash. Then he shoves a second gun from his saddlebags into his jacket and gets out of the car. If nothing else, he’s not sure if Clint is even armed anymore, and the world may be rid of Thanos but that doesn’t mean the thousands of lesser evils went extinct along with him.

Clint is pacing in the gravel, his duster flapping around his ankles. He’s agitated, the way he used to be when Laura and he were fighting, when Stark - fuck - had poked at his sore spots one two many times, when Natasha didn’t check in -

The breath goes out of Phil and Clint looks up. His eyes are burning, furious smoldering cornflower blue, and he’s wearing a rock star’s coat but he’s still Hawkeye, and Phil sees the exact moment he figures out who Phil’s just thought of, because Clint’s expression cracks down the middle. Phil takes a step forward. “Clint-”

 _“Tasha."_ Her name is barely a whisper, one Phil hasn’t heard in five years, and it’s so weighted with grief that Phil stumble. Clint’s eyes burn a hole in his sternum to match the others scattered over it. “We lost her. You and me, we lost so much. Steve and Tony - Laura and the kids - half the universe, the first time around - we lost _so fucking much,_ Phil. But - Tasha?” Clint’s voice cracks, and it sounds nothing like the chorus he was singing two hours ago. Phil can’t breathe. “We lost Natasha. _I watched her die._ And it was - it was brutal, Phil, how do you change the course of history, save the whole fucking universe, defeat a god, how can you do all that and not be able to save your partner? How does that even happen?” Clint’s hands go to his hair. “We came home and the team fell apart and my family fell apart and I thought, Phil’s still alive, there’s one good thing that survived this shitstorm. And then you were gone too.”

There’s something in Phil’s chest. It feels like broken glass, or Loki’s spear, or the blue-silver sting of a Widow’s Bite, a never-ending death rattle. He tries to open his mouth, tries to say something, anything. Nothing. Clint stares at him for a second and then he makes a strangled, broken sound, the kind Phil had buried at the back of his mind like so many other things. He turns on his heel and walks back toward the Jeep, his shoulders hunched. The driver’s side door slams. Phil waits for the roar of the engine, the crunch of wheels on gravel, but nothing happens. He stands at the edge of the parking lot and listens to the hum of the highway, the faint sounds of conversation wafting over from the McDonald’s.

He doesn't feel drunk anymore. He doesn't know what he feels. His heartbeat is loud in his ears; layered over it is the echo of Clint’s voice, the broken way he’d said _I watched her die._


	4. They Called Her Danger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clint's not making this easy for Phil, you guys.

Phil is woken by music.

He feels for the gun under his pillow before he opens his eyes. The room is dark except for the purple neon glow slanting in from the sign outside. According to his watch, it’s just past four A.M. He suppresses a groan as the memory of the last few hours crashes over his head like a breaking wave of regret. 

He’d gotten back in the Jeep eventually; any of the other alternatives involved Marcus finding out the whole fuckup and Phil wasn’t ready for that, especially since he wasn’t sure of his oldest friend’s exact involvement in said fuckup. They’d sat in silence for a few more minutes and then Clint had put the keys in the ignition and driven them back onto the highway and into the darkness for another hour. He’d stopped at the first motel they found that looked both nondescript and sketchy enough to not care who they were. It was like old times, like the leadup to or the aftermath of so many countless, nameless missions they’d run together in the early SHIELD days - drive through the night, find a back-of-beyond motel to crash for a few hours, exhausted and adrenaline-filled and sometimes a little tipsy or a little shot, because it could go either way, with them. But this time was also nothing of the sort, because Clint got them two rooms and left one set of keys on the desk, walking away with the other. 

The heavily-made-up, twenty-something kid at the desk quirked a bored eyebrow at Phil, who sighed and took the keys. By the time he got outside, Clint had hauled a duffel out of the Jeep and was disappearing into his room. Phil’s saddlebags were sitting outside the room next to it. He picked them up, went inside, closed the door and sat down on the bed. There was no sound from Clint’s room. Phil took off his shoes and his suit jacket and lay down on top of the covers, watching the lights outside come through the blinds and spill across the pockmarked ceiling. Despite the adrenaline and the alcohol, he must have fallen asleep at some point, because he was awake now, and there was definitely music coming from outside. 

_ “...grew up in Atlanta but she moved to the Bay, _

_ An uptown beauty you could never escape…” _

It’s Clint, it has to be, but it doesn’t sound like him. He’s too far away for Phil to make out every word, but his voice is low, sad, yearning. Still husky, still gliding over high notes, but sad. Phil hasn’t heard that tone in Clint’s voice since he came back from the dead, himself. He slips a gun into his jacket and his feet into his shoes and unlocks the door. He makes it as far as the curb outside before he processes what he’s seeing and has to stop. 

Clint is sitting on the hood of the Jeep, facing away from Phil, east towards the highway. He’s cradling a guitar, a battered, well-loved thing that must have been in the back of the Jeep. It fits in his arms the same way the bow did - like it’s an extension of him. He’s purposefully quiet, his fingers just skimming through the chords, but the wind carries the sound right and it’s  _ Clint.  _ Phil hears him, he hears him croon  _ “I hear they call her danger, she’s looking for a cheap shot,”  _ and then he hears his own foot slip off the curb, because there is pain and grief and memory in Clint’s voice and  _ he wrote this song for Natasha.  _

Clint has to have heard him, probably knew he was coming the second he stepped out of bed, but he keeps playing, curled around the guitar like he’s protecting it from the wind. He’s wearing a faded hoodie that swallows his newly thin frame; the hood is back, exposing the short cropped hair at the nape of his neck. Part of Phil wants to shout, to ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing, sitting on the hood of a Jeep in the middle of a parking lot with his back to twenty windows full of potential threats. The other part of him, the guilt-ridden, grief-stricken part of him, tells him to sit his ass down and listen, and he does, right there on the curb. Clint keeps playing, keeps singing, and his throat starts catching on the vowels like he’s taking a bullet each time, and Phil can tell when he’s almost at the end because he spasms over the guitar even as his voice flings itself outwards,  _ “I gotta tell you, I’ll never be the same - heaven don’t have a name-!” _

Phil gasps as Clint rips into the last chorus, because those last few notes are gouging themselves into his chest. He thinks of a wild, defiant, exhausted woman with her knife to Clint’s throat, looking up at Phil through a tangle of flaming hair and baring her teeth, even as Phil levels a gun at her head, even as Clint chokes  _ “Coulson, don’t!’  _ He thinks of long nights waiting for a mark, trying and failing to not be amused as her sardonic commentary wipes the floor with Clint, who’s imprinted on her like the world’s most lethal duckling. Thinks of her curled up on the couch in his office in the weeks after she and Clint implode, after he marries Laura, after his first daughter is born, because Phil gets it, he does, without either of them ever having to talk about it. He thinks of dying and coming back to find them shoulder to shoulder, holding their own next to gods and monsters and Iron Man and Captain America, the best they’d ever been, better in his absence.

He thinks of leaving on a plane with a new team who will never match up. He thinks of the weeks and weeks of silence after the Snap and then that terrible call, the first and last time he ever hears her cry -  _ they’re all gone, Phil, and I can’t find him, and I loved them too, I did, I loved them too.  _ Thinks of Marcus, back in the flesh again, saying  _ I really am sorry, Cheese. But it was her call.  _ Thinks of going back to his old office, not the same one. Thinks of sitting at the desk and staring and staring and staring at the door, waiting for her to march in like she owned the place, dragging a loudly-protesting Clint by the ear like he didn’t have a fifty-pound advantage over her.  _ Coulson, make him less of an idiot before I kill him in his sleep and light all your Captain America collectibles on fire.  _

His eyes are wet. He forces himself to look up. The last few chords drift towards him, just a brush of fingers against the strings before they trail into silence. Clint’s still looking off into the distance, breathing hard. They stay like that, Clint cross-legged on the hood of the Jeep, Phil hunched over on the curb, until the sky starts to lighten over in the east. 

Clint slides off the Jeep, lays the guitar down in the back and walks towards the rooms. He doesn’t look at Phil; there are tracks on his cheeks, gleaming as the air around them grows clearer by the minute. Phil fixes his eyes on Clint’s boots as they move over the asphalt. He’s expecting Clint to say nothing. He’s not expecting to feel Clint’s fingers brush the side of his head as he passes. It’s a fleeting touch, but Phil notices every one of the calluses still on his fingers. 

Clint’s door opens and closes. A couple of cars drift down the highway. Phil scrubs his hands over his face; it feels raw. His head is killing him. Through the door, he hears his SHIELD-issued phone start to ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Heaven Don't Have A Name" is Natasha's song forever and no one can convince me otherwise.


End file.
